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CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



REPORT OF SPECIAL MEETING, APRIL 3, 1900. 

A special meeting of the Chicago Historical Society was held 
in the lecture hall of its building on Tuesday evening, April 3, 1900, 
at eight o'clock, pursuant to notice. 

President John N. Jewett in the chair. 

The following interesting papers were presented, and read : 

FATHER MARQUETTE : 

BY 

Franklin MacVeagh. 

Mr. President: My subject is Marquette. Marquette 
the martyr ; hero and martyr. Hero if intrepid courage in 
great adventure, and vast self-sacrifice on a plane of noble 
enthusiasm makes a hero — martyr though dying by the sen- 
tence of his own sacrifice. And martyr not to his faith only, 
but to his faith and to his good works and to his great deeds 
alike. 

And why do I tell this twice told tale? First, I tell it 
because I am fond of it myself. Again, I tell it because it is 
never idle to stop in the vast hurry of our bread-getting and 
money-getting life to contemplate for a while one of those 
rare few men who, though illustrious by reason of the his- 
torical importance of their deeds, have their first claim to 
the reverence of the world by reason of the exceptional, the 
phenomenal elevation of their characters, their aims and 
their private lives. Of these men Marquette is one ; and 
they are rare men indeed. Admitted to the parliament of 
history by their celebrity, they represent in it not alone what 
is illustrious ; but they represent there, what else would find 
no representation in it, the unsung, the uncommemorated 
virtue of the world. Their constituency is the scattered com- 
munity of men and women, of whatever nations or relig- 
ions or times, whose lives are pure and whose aims are noble. 

253 






254 

And then, in the third place, it is right, I think, to remind 
ourselves that, though individuals here and there certainly 
do so, we do not as a community appreciate the interest of 
the early history of the West, nor the very remarkable men 
who figured in it. Nor can it be amiss before a Chicago 
audience to recall, from the almost neglected history of the 
very spot on which we live, the figure of a man whose fame 
and character would shed upon Chicago the light of an ex- 
ceptional distinction if the city would but learn to recognize 
them with sympathy and treasure them with becoming rev- 
erence : a fame that is better understood almost everywhere 
else than here where it might properly be a household word 
— a household word conferring a constant benefaction. 
There was a particular suggestion years ago to see to it that 
the fame of Marquette is cherished among us. It was given 
by the two-hundredth anniversary of Marquette's visit here. 
An effort was made to have that significant anniversary ap- 
propriately recognized ; but quite without avail. Other 
prominent things which were the expressions and interests 
of our materialism and our ever-present present, quite 
crowded out thoughts of heroes and of the past. The pres- 
ent in this city is surely not "the fleeting present" ; for it 
seems everlasting. We must confess that Chicago in the 
aggregate has as yet no historic feeling, and but little senti- 
mental life of any sort. Her life for the most part is in to- 
day; she is not even profoundly interested in the future 
yet. And regard for the past, as we all know, comes latest. 
Regard for the past is the interest of mature life, and Chi- 
cago is yet in her first fine vigorous and somewhat thought- 
less youth. A boy, at first, lives entirely in the present. To- 
day is all of life to him for his mind is narrow and his ex- 
istence a monotone. By and by as he grows toward man- 
hood he lives also in the future — as imagination becomes a 
force in him. Later still when he has grown to the full 
stature of matured manhood he lives partly in the past — 
because in the man memory becomes infused with sentiment 
and reason. But surely the early history of the West ought 
to stir us. It ought to be a part of our treasures. It is in- 
spiring and it is ours. If it does not altogether belong to 



255 

our race it is at any rate a part of the land which is now be- 
coming in the true sense our home. 

And this first history of the West has the wider interest 
still of a famous part, a heroic part even if a later part of 
the great history of the new birth of the world. For the 
grand invasion of this continent by Martitime Europe, for 
which the surprising way was opened by the great enter- 
prise of great Columbus, was an effect of that 
marvelous expansive impulse, itself an expression of 
the noble impatience of the Renascence, which widened 
the narrow horizon of Europe until it became 
coterminous with the world. The world of Europe was 
hampered by horizons which defeated knowledge ; 
but there gathered there such a compressed force of 
the spirit of discovery and adventure that it needs must 
burst forth and overrun the globe. On every side, the hori- 
zon of Europe was driven back by a legion of adventurous 
men who were strangers to fear and to fatigue. American 
exploration and colonization were born of the impulse of 
the Renascence. And matter of fact as it is to-day Amer- 
ica's early days are a romance. It was hid from the world 
by seas that stretched away, in the imaginations of men, 
into gloom and death ; and for centuries it lay awaiting dis- 
covery. 

Europe at last was equal to such great enterprise. But 
it took what the world could muster of science; and added 
to this a courage disciplined by the Moorish Wars, sup- 
ported by religious enthusiasm and inspired by the ad- 
venturous spirit of a new era. The first history of America 
is the story of restless adventure; of cavaliers whose ex- 
ploits belittle fiction ; of sailors who in their crazy crafts be- 
lieved themselves to be cavaliers ; of workmen who had the 
hearts of soldiers ; of Puritans who carried in their brave 
souls the seeds of a free nation ; of priests who were heroes 
and martyrs ; of women who were saints upon Earth. In 
the midst of this there was much that was cruel, much that 
was mean ; but far above all else the early history of America 
was distinguished superlatively by courage, adventure, high 
purpose, Christian heroism, chivalry and romance. 



256 

In this Christian heroism, this romance, the history of 
the West fully shares ; and in the history of the West though 
Marquette is not the greatest figure, of the great figures he 
is the purest, the noblest and the best. 

At once upon the discovery of America, Spain, Portugal, 
England and France began to explore, to despoil, to colo- 
nize and to convert it. France alone of these nations failed 
utterly to maintain herself. Except a remnant on the Lower 
St. Lawrence and some traces along the Mississippi, there 
remains of France in America only a few local names, and 
the traditions of a generous and humane policy that was 
loftily maintained for a time by the ready sacrifices of he- 
roic men. Of these nations Spain and France equally pro- 
claimed a religious with their secular purpose; but France, 
and France only, maintained her religious designs with such 
deep devotion and lofty heroism as must for all time chal- 
lenge the admiration of the world. England, however, and 
France alike, were earnest and sincere. But their characters 
differed utterly ; their policy and methods as utterly ; and 
their success differed as widely as these. The story of the 
English in America is relatively matter of fact history, in- 
teresting especially to the political student. The story of 
the French is only interesting to the political student as a 
complete political failure, but to all men of sentiment as 
an episode, a romance creditable in the highest degree to 
humanity. 

Of the history of France in America, no other portion is 
so highly to her honor, or to the honor of humanity, as the 
lives and labors of her Missionary Priests. And of all the 
wonderful line of missionaries of France, in the New World, 
Marquette is easily the most distinguished. 

Let us not misconceive the spirit and lives of the French 
missionaries in North America because of our familiarity 
with present missionary ideas and conditions. We can 
hardly say too much in praise of contemporary missionaries, 
but conditions have changed. Marquette and his compeers 
traveled on snow-shoes when they did not go barefoot ; they 
lived on moss when they could not luxuriously feast upon 
pounded maize ; they lived in bark huts when fortunate 
enough to sleep indoors ; and they died of labor and ex- 



257 

posure when they were not murdered by the Indians. Their 
missions, therefore, existed without great revenues ; and the 
most they asked of their friends at home was prayers for 
the souls they had come to save. 

Nor let us fail to conceive the phenomenal nobleness of 
these French men because they were heroes and martyrs in 
the name of a church that may not be ours, and which ex- 
presses itself in ways that we may not prefer. Whosesoever 
church it is and whosesoever it is not, it is at least a great 
church beyond compare ; and it has in its history splendid 
epochs, when it commanded greater self-sacrifice and higher 
endeavor than Christianity has otherwise known since its 
first lofty days. One such epoch, raised distinctly above the 
level of the centuries, was the epoch of the French Jesuits 
in North America. They were the elect of a society which 
had a first claim upon the most fervent souls. The records 
of humanity will be sought in vain for the story of purer 
lives, of more steadfast apostleship or of sterner martyr- 
doms. Jogues, Bressani, Daniel, Brebeuf, Lalemant, Gar- 
nier, Marquette, living and dying, illustrated the loftiest vir- 
tue in the world. No praise is too extravagant ; no language 
is too sacred to apply to them. They were a "Glorious Com- 
pany of Apostles;" they were a "Noble Army of Martyrs." 

Jacques Marquette was born at Laon, France, in 1637 — 
June 10th — and died about Easter time, May 18th, 1675. I 
have heard him called "old Father Marquette" — but he died 
when he was only 37. It does not take very long, you see, 
for a great soul to impress itself for all time upon the heart 
of the world. 

He came to America in 1666, though his American 
career hardly began until 1668. His career, therefore, so 
far as the world knows it, lasted but seven years. Is it not 
wonderful how quickly and easily the world finds out its 
heroes? His whole life was short, his American life very 
short ; his career was in a wilderness ; and he has no 
biographer. But who questions the fixity of his historical 
position? Who doubts the growth of his fame and influence 
as the West awakens step by step to a sense of its history? 

Of his life at home in France — that is of nearly the first 
thirty of the short thirty-seven years of this young man's 



258 

life, scarcely anything is told. He was a well born gentle- 
man — a man of an ancient and distinguished family — of a 
family that mingled in affairs of state and in works of 
philanthropy — of a family that one hundred years later sent 
three young men to fight in our Revolutionary War with 
LaFayette and de Rochambeau. So much is known. Then 
at 17 he became a Jesuit like many another ardent youth; 
and in due time he became a priest. That is nearly all. 

In 1666, he came to America as a missionary. And no 
man ever went into a new world more worthily. Of that 
you may feel perfectly sure. He came first to serve religion 
and to spread its beneficent life and its sure salvation. More 
than one man of his time did that as well. None did it bet- 
ter. But France, as I have said, had both a religious and a 
secular purpose in America. No other man of France, 
whether priest or layman, combined in his own labors the 
best parts of both these purposes as did Marquette. The 
significance of his American life is, therefore, both political 
and religious. He was a missionary and a discoverer. He 
was no less a missionary because a discoverer. He quit the 
easy life of a French gentleman, when to be a French gentle- 
man was the finest thing in the world, and exchanged it for 
the life of a priest and missionary because he was by nature 
of the stuff from which the grandest priests and missionaries 
are made. 

When Marquette came to America, France had long 
been in possession of Canada on the St. Lawrence and the 
lower lakes ; and the time was at hand to push onward 
through the wilderness to the upper lakes. In this new ad- 
vance Marquette was destined for a distinguished part. He 
was in a short time sent into this frontier field — the frontier 
of a frontier. There he spent five of his famous seven years. 
He learned six Indian languages, he journeyed widely, he 
established missions and founded towns, he taught and 
preached. In brief he led the life of a Jesuit Missionary in 
the wilds of Early America. Can we mistake the life he led ? 
Five years — five years in the wilds on our Northern lakes 
two hundred years ago — four thousand miles from home, 
hundreds of miles of wilderness from even a semblance of 
France. Five years that seem to us so short ; that must have 



259 

been so long. Five years in the savage North without one 
day of home or France — without one hope of home or 
France. Five years in which this cultured mind had not 
one touch with culture, in which this loving heart had not 
one comfort of home. In which he carried his life in his 
hand, and had not one advantage of civilization or one mo- 
ment's protection of law. Five years in which perished 
every dream of home or country. Snow and ice and sav- 
ages for five winters. He had nothing to live for but duty 
and nothing to hope for but death. And when his magnifi- 
cent duty was done nothing came but death. Is it a wonder 
that these years, though they only confirmed his purpose to. 
devote every breath, every shred of his life to his mission 
brought him broken health and a constitution beyond repair ? 
This young man did absolutely all he could ; and five ardent 
years consumed his strength. A fatal malady took hold 
upon him ; and though in the next two years he grew better 
and worse, at the end he died. 

Did he spend his invalid life in repose? It is a shame 
to ask it. These two years are the years especially that 
made him famous. 

During his life on the lakes — in the advance of the 
French movement in America — he conceived and faithfully 
cherished the design of discovering the Mississippi. This 
purpose possessed his imagination; and I have sometimes 
fancied him standing upon some outlook oh the shore of 
Lake Superior, in the full expression of his noble spirit, 
looking into the West and feeding his lonely soul with vis- 
ions of his great adventure. Not, however, with the pur- 
pose of discovery only was his mind inflamed. He knew 
the political and commercial and scientific importance of the 
discovery and he valued it for the sake of France. But he 
longed, also, to carry the gospel to the far-away tribes on 
the banks of that unknown river, and to establish a mission 
among them. It is this double purpose and this double de- 
votion that distinguished Marquette from other great dis- 
coverers, and from other great priests. 

He was obliged to defer his expedition from time to 
time; but by and by, in 1673, Frontenac, the French Gov- 
ernor at Quebec, organized a party for the discovery under 



26o 

the command of Joliet, after whom our neighboring city is 
named. He sent Joliet to Marquette at the Straits of 
Mackinac; and Marquette was appointed by his superior to 
be Joliet's associate in the exploration. Joliet was by nature 
a trader ; Marquette was by nature a discoverer ; which per- 
haps explains how to Marquette, without effort of his, the 
honor of the discovery chiefly clings. 

With five Frenchmen Marquette and Joliet on May 17, 
1673, set forth. They followed from Mackinac down the 
west side of Green Bay to the present town of Green Bay 
— then already established. Thence along the Fox River 
and through Winnebago Lake; again along the Fox to a 
portage between the Fox and the head-waters of the Wis- 
consin. Thence to the Wisconsin and down this "wild 
beautiful river," as another traveler called it a few years 
later, until it came to the great Mississippi, at the point 
where Prairie du Chien now stands. Then they turned 
their canoes into the great unknown river and steered them 
as far as the Arkansas, or the unnamed river that is now 
called the Arkansas, exploring and preaching and teaching 
as they went. They were now convinced that the great 
river flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, and this completed 
their purpose ; and growing fearful lest they should be slain 
and thus the great fruits of their discovery be lost to France, 
they turned back and came paddling their canoes laboriously 
against the current until they reached the Illinois, into which 
they turned. They came slowly, still exploring and preach- 
ing, along the Illinois, the Desplaines and the Chicago 
rivers to Lake Michigan and then onward back to the 
Straits. This is the first time the site of Chicago was vis- 
ited by civilized men. 

Such is the mere bare outline of the great discovery. It 
is not difficult, however, for us now to appreciate its im- 
portance nor to fill in the colors of the adventure. The 
Mississippi was the objective of Western discovery in the 
time of Marquette. Its importance to France was exceed- 
ingly great, for France, England and Spain were competing 
for supremacy in America. Here was a great continental 
river unknown except by rumor to any European. It was 
believed to be the great artery of the Continent and that its 



26l 

possession by either of the great rivals would almost decide 
the contest. Settlement — colonization — at first but fringed 
the Continent along its eastern shores. France slowly- 
pushed her way inward to the great lakes; but cautiously, 
one station giving neighborhood to another a little in ad- 
vance. Then came the time when discovery launched itself 
and sailed away into unknown regions, as in the careers of 
Cortes and Pizarro, and Marquette with his small party cut 
loose from all that was known and boldly sought the allur- 
ing but dangerous unknown. 

France had pushed its commerce inland to the lakes and 
was carrying its wares laboriously a thousand miles. If a 
great outlet could be found by river to the Atlantic then 
trade it was thought would flow easily as in Europe. Then 
wealth need no longer be dragged to France, but would 
flow in an easy and affluent current. And so Empire would 
follow, as Empire and Culture always have followed, in the 
footsteps of successful commerce. 

Rumor carried by the Indian tribes told of this great 
river; which might flow into the Gulf of Mexico or might 
perchance carry the adventurous traveler to the Vermillion 
Sea. And rumor did not fail to surround the unknown 
river with every terror that could appal or dissuade discov- 
ery. With these Marquette was familiar. But he loved 
France more than his life ; and he also heard in imagination 
night and day, the piteous call of the far-away tribes to come 
with his helpful gospel and save them from eternal death. 
He had the deep devotion of the missionary, and the high 
conception and courage of the discoverer. It was no holiday 
excursion to him. He knew the hazard. He said, he gladly 
exposed his life ; and Marquette never boasted. 

And he did expose his life for days and nights continu- 
ally until months rolled away. Contemplate the little band 
of seven exploring twenty-seven hundred miles through a 
region where the face of a civilized man had never been seen 
before. Danger on every side of them. No refuge any- 
where outside of their steady courage. Among a people 
trained to treachery and with whom pity had no prompter 
when policy was silent. A race among whom the murder of 
a stranger was not a crime ; among whom hospitality did 



262 

not include the idea of protection ; whose only lenity pro- 
ceeded from fear or indifference. Such men Marquette 
found before him, behind him and about him when he went 
to find the great river, and to carry salvation to lost nations 
on its borders. 

Marquette's health was now completely shattered. He 
did not repine. He was content. He had done his duty. 
He had served God and his country. He had, he believed, 
saved souls, and had done a great service to the Future. 
To his simple soul that was enough and more than enough. 
Nor did he go or seek to go to Quebec, where praise and 
reputation awaited him. He did not attempt to place his 
great service before the Government. He stayed at his fron- 
tier post. Nor did he ever go to Quebec or France. He 
had no time to protect his fame. His remaining days were 
too short and precious to be given to personal glory. He 
purposed to die in the wilderness doing his duty. Would 
not a familiar knowledge of such a man be of untold value 
to the men and the youth of this city? 

Nursing his health for the completion of his long cher- 
ished design, he persuaded himself, after a year of further 
labor at the Straits, that he was equal to the one task which 
especially remained. This was to establish, to the honor of 
The Virgin and for the salvation of souls, a mission on the 
banks of the Illinois. This his cherished design he hoped to 
complete, knowing it was to be the last service of his life — 
the crowning sacrifice of those last two years that have 
brought him enduring fame. 

He journeyed hundreds of miles in the face of winter 
into the lonely and savage wilderness. In November or De- 
cember, with two attendants, he reached the Chicago river. 
Here his health again gave away ; and so weak and ill had 
he become that though so near the tribes he came to save 
he could go no further. For four months he lived upon the 
desolate banks of our river, in mid-winter. His faithful at- 
tendants built a hut in which he lived. Thus Marquette be- 
came again identified with Chicago — this time as the first 
civilized resident upon its site ; and this constitutes the great- 
est honor of which this city can boast. 

Lying or weakly sitting in his lonely hut on the banks 



263 

of our river, the whole desolate region covered with snow 
and ice, with desolation and wilderness all about him, him- 
self chilled with the cruel winter winds of our prairie and 
lake, his health long since gone and his strength now gone 
too, and death standing daily at his lonely side, the great, 
gentle spirit of Marquette never revealed itself more 
superbly. No matter his misfortunes, he permitted no 
thought but of his duty ; no matter his helplessness, he con- 
templated no refuge but the banks of the Illinois. He spent 
days and nights in religious devotions, and at last spent nine 
days in fasting and sacrifice that the Blessed Virgin might 
still permit him to carry at least one word of the Gospel to 
the Indians of the Illinois. And he believed the Virgin 
granted his prayer. 

Such a life upon the site of this city — the first civilized 
life in its history — might well have dedicated it at the least 
to the highest ambitions of citizenship. 

About the end of March — the year was 1675 — he felt 
himself revive at last, and having faith that strength would 
be vouchsafed until he reached his aim he journeyed to Kas- 
kaskia — an Indian town he named himself, and which was 
near where Ottawa or rather Utica now is. Knowing his 
time was short he preached and taught as best he could and 
lost no time. He knew he should not preach again. And 
when he had taught and preached his last and knew his end 
was near, with his faithful men he took the way to Mack- 
inac. They reached our lake and started in their rude 
canoes around its bend and down its eastern shore. They 
journeyed on a speck of civilization in that wide expanse of 
savage lake and land ; and as they paddled their canoes one 
afternoon in that lonely springtime, the good Marquette, 
who calmly felt the long looked for end had come, asked 
his men to take him to the shore just where a little river, 
since fondly named for him, ran down into the lake. They 
took him to the shore and built a birch-bark hut in which he 
might lie down and rest. He told them though that he 
should not live, and asked that they would make his grave, 
when he was dead, near where he lay. He thanked them for 
their constant kindness, regretted to them that he had been 
such trouble, then said good night and bade them go and 



264 

sleep, saying that he would call them when it was necessary. 
In the middle hours of that night a quiet voice awakened 
the sleepers. He said his hour had come at last. He then 
thanked God that He permitted him to die a missionary in 
the Wilderness ; and asked his men to hold for him a crucifix 
on which he gazed until the last. Even Mackinac, even that 
much of home and love, he did not reach. 

And so lived and died Father Marquette. Was he not 
both hero and martyr ? 

And now I am done. Bancroft has said "The West will 
build his monument." I trust it may. Noble, gentle, loving, 
brave Marquette ! Honors paid to him would have the 
peculiar grace of honors unsought and uncontemplated. He 
did not seek to fill a great place among his contemporaries ; 
and he died without a thought of posterity or fame. 



MARQUETTE AT MICHILLIMACKINAC : 

BY 

Edward Osgood Brown. 

After the great pleasure that you must have felt with me 
in hearing the very delightful paper on Father Marquette 
which Mr. MacVeagh has just given us, you will feel I am 
sure, but slight, if any disappointment when I say to you, as 
I am obliged to do, that although I am announced also for a 
"paper" this evening, it is of the very slightest, and that for 
the few words which I have to say, "Marquette at Macki- 
nac" is hardly a suitable title. I could suggest, however, 
myself, nothing better than "Marquette at Michillimacki- 
nac," and this suggestion reached your Secretary too late 
for a correction of his notice. 

The name, Mackinaw, or Mackinac, as contrary to all 
principles of euphony and all local usage and tradition, In- 
dian, French and English — recent hotel residents of the 
beautiful island at the entrance to Lake Michigan, insist 
upon pronouncing it, is generally and I suppose properly 
applied to the island itself — but the whole country about the 
Straits between the Northern and Southern peninsulas of 
Michigan from the Sault St. Marie on the North to Arbor 



265 

Croche — or Harbor Springs — on one side, and Green Bay 
on the other, on the South — was known as Michillimackinac 
in the time of Father Marquette. And it is of the traditions 
relating to his life, and labors, death and burial in that coun- 
try that I wish to say a few words. Of course Marquette, 
to whom the Straits of Mackinac were a home from 1671 to 
1673, must frequently have visited the Turtle's Back, as the 
Indian called the beautiful and loftily rising Island of Mack- 
inac itself, but despite the persistency of a tradition among 
the Indians and half-breeds, fostered by the local pride of 
resident clergymen of the island, that he settled there origin- 
ally, when, in 167 1, with his Huron Indian flock flying be- 
fore the Sioux from the Mission of St. Esprit at Lapointe 
near the Western End of Lake Superior, he came to 
Michillimackinac, there is scant proof of the fact, if it be 
one. 

What is certain is, that very soon, at all events, he and 
his flock had established themselves on the Mainland — the 
Northern Peninsula of Michigan — and named the Mission 
St. Ignace. There, in 1672, a chapel had been built sur- 
rounded by the cabins of the Indians, the whole village being 
enclosed within a stockade, for better protection against ene- 
mies. This place is at the Northern end of the present vil- 
lage or City of St. Ignace. I can identify it to those who may 
on one of the Lake Superior steamers have stopped at the 
pier at St. Ignace four miles this side of Mackinac Island — 
as being at the point on the long, long street which sweeps 
around the bay and forms the main part of that settlement, 
which is most remote from that stopping place. 

Father Charlevoix, and following him evidently, later 
writers, have expressed wonder at Father Marquette's 
selecting what they term so undesirable a place for his Mis- 
sion and the settlement of the Hurons. To justify that won- 
der they speak of the intense cold and the sterility of the 
soil. 

Charlevoix says that Father Marquette determined the 
choice of the spot ; but Father Marquette himself says that 
the Indians had previously signified their design to settle 
there, led by the abundance of game, the great quantity of 
fish and the adaptability of the soil for maize, the Indian's 
chief agricultural product. 



266 

But apart from the question whether Father Marquette 
located the Indians, rather than the Indians Father Mar- 
quette, Charlevoix seems to me to speak with less sagacity 
than is usual in a Jesuit priest, in so expressing himself. If 
Father Marquette did determine the place of settlement, it 
seems to me easy to understand. 

The Jesuit Missionaries in America, in their burning zeal 
had exiled themselves from the world of artistic beauty into 
which they were born, they had doomed themselves to much 
that was hateful and disgusting — to sodden forests and 
smoky wigwams ; to filthy food and unclean companions ; 
but they had preserved their love of beauty, and nature to 
them took the place of art. I wonder not, and who that is 
familiar with Michillimackinac can wonder, that Father 
Marquette should have been glad to settle where a wonder- 
fully beautiful winter landscape alternates with an incom- 
parable one of shining summer seas? 

On the contrary I can well imagine him, when first he 
gazed from the bluffs upon the country called Michillimack- 
inac, exclaiming, as Scott makes King James, of Loch Kat- 
rina: 

"And what a scene were here, * * 

For princely pomp or churchman's pride ! 

On this bold brow a lordly tower, 

In that soft vale a lady's bower! 

On yonder meadow far away, 

The turrets of a cloister gray ! 

How blithely might the bugle horn 

Chide on this Lake the lingering morn ! 

And when the midnight moon should lave 

Her forehead in the silver wave, 

How solemn on the ear would come 

The holy matin's distant hum !" 

Until the 17th of May, 1673, Marquette labored at this 
Mission with abundant and encouraging results, to judge 
from his letter to his superior in 1672. He says that he had 
almost five hundred Indians about him, who wished to be 
Christians, who listened with eagerness to his teaching, who 
brought their children to the chapel to be baptized, and came 
regularly to prayers. Be the wind or cold what it might, 
many Indians came twice a day to the chapel. When he was 
obliged to go to the Sault for a fortnight, they counted the 



267 

days of his absence, repaired to the chapel for prayers as 
though he were present, and welcomed him back with joy. 

"The minds," he writes, "of the Indians here are now 
more mild, tractable and better disposed to receive instruc- 
tion than in any other part." 

But the Illinois mission that he had planned, and the 
Great River that he wished to explore and dedicate to Mary, 
were always in his thought, and it was with great joy, there- 
fore, that, in the spring of 1673, he heard that he had been 
ordered by his superior to turn over the mission at Michilli- 
mackinac to a successor and himself accompany Louis Joliet, 
designated by the governor of Canada, in the exploration of 
the Mississippi. 

Mr. MacVeagh has told you of that journey. Mar- 
quette did not return from it to the mission of St. Ignace, 
but stopped during a whole year, from the autumn of 1673 
to the last days of October, 1674, at the mission of St. Fran- 
cis Xavier on Green Bay. When, after his second visit to 
the Illinois Indians, he died, on his return journey to Mich- 
illimackinac, as Mr. MacVeagh has told you, it was near 
where stands the present City of Ludington. 

Twice a wooden cross has been raised to mark the spot — 
once when his companions left him there to keep on their 
saddened way to Michillimackinac, and once again when, in 
1 82 1, a man who was, at the same time, the last of the great 
French Missionary priests and the first of a long series of 
true American Apostles — Father Gabriel Richard — with the 
assistance of Indians, sought out the spot, raised over it a 
wooden cross, and cut with his knife upon it : 

Fr. J. Marquette 
Died here 1st May, 1675. 

He then celebrated mass on the spot and pronounced a 
eulogium on the great missionary. 

He probably thought that Marquette's remains still lay 
there — for at that time the Jesuit Relations which told of the 
translation of his body to the mission church of St. Ignace, 
in 1677, were not accessible to every reader, as through the 
work of modern historians and scholars they have since be- 



268 

come. Nevertheless, the tradition that some great mission- 
ary was buried on the site of the St. Ignace mission always 
existed. Father Jacker, a Jesuit friend of mine — an ardent 
and judicious historical scholar, who in late years had 
charge of the present parish at St. Ignace told me, in 1886, 
that a very honest and intelligent Indian then living, one 
Joseph Misitago, had told him that, in that same year, 182 1, 
he had met Father Richard lost in the woods back of the 
present site of St. Ignace, where he had gone in search of 
any traces of that church and burial place. But it did not 
appear that he had connected the tradition with Marquette. 

A "Relation" of Father Dablon, however — lying from 
1677 to 1800 in the Library of the Jesuit College at Quebec, 
and by the last Canadian survivor of the order, Father Cazot 
— in 1800, (for after Canada became an English dominion 
the reception of new members was forbidden for a time), 
turned over to the Gray Nuns of the Hotel Dieu and by them 
recommitted to the Jesuits who in 1842 re-established the 
society in Canada — was with Marquette's journal and many 
other valuable papers in 1852 discovered and published by 
Dr. Shea. It tells of Marquette's death and proceeds : 

"God did not choose to suffer so precious a deposit to re- 
main unhonored and forgotten amid the woods. The Kis- 
kakon Indians who for the last ten years have publicly pro- 
fessed Christianity, in which they were first instructed by 
Father Marquette, when stationed at La Pointe du Saint 
Esprit at the extremity of Lake Superior, were hunting last 
winter on the banks of Lake Illinois. As they were return- 
ing early in spring, they resolved to pass by the tomb of 
their good Father, whom they tenderly loved, and God even 
gave them the thought of taking his remains and bringing 
them to our church at the mission of St. Ignatius, at Mich- 
illimackinac, where they reside. 

"They accordingly repaired to the spot, and, after some 
deliberation, they resolved to proceed with their father, as 
they usually do with those whom they respect. They opened 
the grave, divested the body, and though the flesh and intes- 
tines were all dried up, they found it whole, the skin being 
in no way injured. This did not prevent their dissecting it, 
according to custom. They washed the bones and dried 



269 

them in the sun. Then putting them neatly in a box of birch 
bark they set out to bear them to the house of St. Ignatius. 
The convoy consisted of nearly thirty canoes, in excellent 
order, including even a good number of Iroquois, who had 
joined our Algonquins, to honor the ceremony. As they 
approached our house, Father Nouvel, who is Superior, 
went to meet them with Father Pierson, accompanied by all 
the French and Indians of the place. Having caused the 
convoy to stop, he made the ordinary interrogations to ver- 
ify the fact that the body which they bore was really Father. 
Marquette's. Then, before landing, he intoned the 'De Pro- 
fundis' in sight of the thirty canoes still on the water, and of 
all the people on the shores. After this the body was carried 
to the church, observing all that the ritual prescribes for 
such ceremonies. It remained exposed under a pall 
stretched as if over a coffin all that day, which was Pente- 
cost Monday, the 8th of June, (1677). The next day, when 
all the funeral honors had been paid it, it was deposited in a 
little vault in the middle of the church, where he reposes as 
the guardian angel of our Ottawa Missions. The Indians 
often come to pray on his tomb." 

In 1877, 200 years later, Father Jacker, of the Society of 
Jesus, was in charge of the Catholic parish at the present 
City of St. Ignace. He was a most intelligent and judicious 
man, scholarly and intellectually vigorous, ardent, indeed, 
in his duties and zealous for the honor of his order, but far 
removed from the impulsive enthusiasm which would lead 
him to treat rash and unfounded suppositions as facts. 

I will not open a controversy which was quite spirited 
twenty years ago, as to whether Father Jacker's belief that 
the site of the Jesuit church of 1677 and the bones of Father 
Marquette were discovered by him in 1877, was well 
founded or not. He had such a belief, and his parishioners 
at his suggestion erected a very modest monument to mark 
the spot. I can only quote the conclusion of a letter of his 
to Dr. Shea, the historian, in which, after a most careful an- 
alysis of all the facts bearing on the matter, he says : 

"Is it then, you may ask, absolutely certain that the mod- 
est monument erected by the people of the neighborhood, in 
the City of St. Ignace, marks the true site of Father Mar- 



270 

quette's grave ? I am not yet prepared to say so. But I have 
not heard of, nor can I imagine, any circumstance connected 
with our search, that would warrant any positive doubt. 
Everything it seems to me, answers the requirements of 
good circumstantial proof so nicely — thousands of judicial 
decisions are rendered on much slighter evidence — that mere 
chance could have brought about such an orderly combina- 
tion of facts with as much probability only, as two alphabets 
of type, scattered on the ground, might be expected to form, 
in the proper succession of letters, the name of Marquette ; 
but if you or any one else are leaning more on the side of 
doubt, I shall not quarrel with you. 

"Some of the remains were re-interred under the monu- 
ment together with specimens of the debris. Other pieces 
are in the possession of a number of the admirers of Father 
Marquette, all over the country. The greatest and most in- 
teresting collection (the bones being arranged in a neat cas- 
ket, presented for that purpose, by Rev. Father Faeber of 
St. Louis), will be piously preserved in the Marquette Col- 
lege of Milwaukee. I thought it would be safer there than 
in the hands of Your friend, 

Edward Jacker." 

I have given this quotation from Father Jacker's letter 
only because historic doubts have been cast on the assump- 
tion that Marquette's relics were found at St. Ignace, by 
members of this Society of undoubted sagacity and acumen, 
notably, Mr. H. H. Hurlbut in a paper read before it on 
October 15, 1878, and by Robert Fergus later. 

I must think, however, that these gentlemen (and I have 
read their papers carefully), were the ones who jumped at 
conclusions rather than Father Jacker, whose reasons for 
believing that he had actually discovered the remains of 
Marquette, they had evidently never seen. 

But it is really of small importance whether Father 
Jacker or the sceptics are right. All agree that no more fit- 
ting place than the Island of Mackinac — at the entrance of 
this great Mississippi Valley which he first explored — can 
be found for a national monument to this intrepid soldier 
of the Cross. 



271 

It was the supposed discovery of his relics which first 
gave form to this idea. On August 8th and 9th, in 1878, an 
association was formed at Mackinac Island for the purpose 
of securing this monument. Senators Stockbridge and Ferry, 
of Michigan, were prime movers in the enterprise, which 
they believed would reflect honor on their state, and the lat- 
ter was the first President of the Association. Invitations 
to attend the meeting at Mackinac Island in 1878 had been 
given to members of the various Historical Societies of the 
West, and if I am not much mistaken this Society was rep- 
resented, I think by the late Hon. Thomas Hoyne and 
others. 

For various reasons, the movement — although com- 
menced and fairly under way — soon became quiescent and 
remained so until the last summer, when a determined effort 
to revive it, this time with undoubted prospects of success, 
was made. A new organization, to be incorporated under 
the laws of Michigan, was formed and called The Mar- 
quette Monument Association. Mr. MacVeagh has con- 
sented to act as its President, and I have the honor to be its 
Secretary. Mr. Peter White, of Marquette, an ardent ad- 
mirer of Marquette whose memory in the prosperous city on 
Lake Superior which is named for him he has done much to 
honor, is its Treasurer. Its Trustees are Archbishop Ire- 
land and the Anglican and Roman Catholic Bishops of 
Michigan, Davies and Foley, Gov. Peck, of Wisconsin, who 
had much to do with the erection in the National Hall of 
Statuary at the Capitol at Washington, of Marquette's 
statue as one of Wisconsin's contributions to that Valhalla, 
Mayor Maybury, of Detroit, James F. Blair, of St. Louis, 
Mr. Onahan, of Chicago, Mr. Dormer, of Buffalo, and 
Messrs. Fenton and Bailey, of Mackinac Island. 

The somewhat rigid laws of Michigan concerning the 
details of incorporation have caused some delay, but the dif- 
ficulties have been surmounted and within a few days now 
the incorporation will have been definitely consummated and 
the Association ready for work. 

The Park Commissioners of Michigan, through the in- 
fluence of Mr. White, have generously donated a magnifi- 
cent site for a heroic statue of Marquette and a surrounding 



272 



017 374 419 5l 



park, just below the fort at Mackinac and in full view of 
the pathway of all vessels entering Lake Michigan. The 
statue, when erected, will be a worthy national monument 
to the noblest of our early pioneers of the West — and very 
fitly will be the first object that must attract the attention 
and command the respect of the countless thousands of 
Americans who are destined in future years to visit the fairy 
isle of Mackinac. 



Adjourned. 



Charles Evans, 

Secretary. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

HI II II H! II 



017 374 419 5 



Conservation Resources 
Lig-Free® Type I 
Pb 8.5, Buffered 



